Материал: Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

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K A R L M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

or we can go to sleep.' The word 'proletariat' is now used as an empty word, as is the word 'people' by the democrats. To give this phrase any reality all petty-bourgeois had to be declared proletarians which meant in fact that we were representing the petty-bourgeois and not the proletariat.70

Marx concluded by saying that the majority would be within its rights in expelling the minority from the League, but that this would be detrimental to the interests of the 'party' whose unity he had found a way of preserving while at the same time separating the two factions. There were at most twelve people he would like to see in his group and he would naturally resign from the Association.

Schapper followed with an impassioned and rather inarticulate speech. He declared himself in favour of Marx's first two proposals but disagreed with the third, which he regarded as far too subtle. They should split into two Leagues, 'one for those who work with the pen, the other for those who work differently'.71 Finally, he could not accept that the bourgeoisie would come to power in Germany, as this robbed the proletarian movement of its whole purpose. Marx replied by insisting that his proposal ensured a complete separation while preserving the unity of the League. He then took up Schapper's point about the next revolution:

If the proletariat came to power, it would employ measures that were petty-bourgeois, not directly proletarian. Our party can only become the governing one when circumstances allow it to carry out its own views. Louis Blanc gives the best example of coming to power too soon. Moreover in France it is not the proletariat alone but also the peasants and petty-bourgeois who will come to power and the measures taken will have to be common to them all - not those of the proletariat alone.72

After Eccarius had supported Marx, Willich left the room without a word and Marx's proposals were adopted, being supported by six out of the ten possible votes.

The Cologne group, having now achieved (with Marx's agreement) its ambition of being in charge of the League, was spurred to fresh activities - though the Willich-Schapper group probably commanded the loyalty of most of the League members in Germany. Marx duly got the new statutes accepted by a general assembly of the London members. Thereafter he seems to have lacked enthusiasm for the League's activities and devoted himself more to economic studies. In May 1851, however, widespread arrests in Germany - which meant the effective end of the League's activities - compelled Marx to demonstrate his solidarity. The Prussian Government had increased its campaign against subversive elements, fol-

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lowing an attempted assassination of Frederick William IV in May 1850 and Kinkel's escape from prison the same year.75 Peter Nothjung, a journeyman tailor and a member of the Cologne Central Committee, was arrested in Leipzig while travelling on League business: on his person were found copies of the Communist Manifesto, Marx's March Address, the Cologne Address of December, the new statutes and a list of addresses which enabled the authorities to arrest the ten other members of the (Cologne Committee. The prosecution was not at first successful: following the arrests, six months of investigation revealed no more than that the accused were members of a propaganda society and failed to show any conspiracy or plot to overthrow the regime; and the judicial authorities in the Rhineland (who retained from the French occupation a more liberal legal system and an antipathy to Prussia) duly declared that there was not enough evidence to justify a trial. The result, however, was not release but further imprisonment while the Government's agent, Stieber, attempted to secure the necessary evidence.

Marx set up a committee which collected money for the accused and organised letters from his friends to as many British newspapers as possible protesting against the imprisonment without trial. But, public opinion was not impressed, The Times declaring that 'if the whole gang were treated as "sturdy beggars" instead of conspirators, they would be dealt with more according to their true characters'.74 The trial was continually postponed during the summer of 1852 and when eventually it opened in October the prosecution revealed the evidence it had been so long accumulating it amounted to nothing more than an attempt to associate Marx and the Cologne communists with some of the more bizarre schemes of Willich's Paris friends - the principal exhibit being a notebook purporting to contain the minutes of meetings of the Communist League recently held in London under Marx's leadership. The notebook was a pure fabrication by one of Stieber's agents, helped by Hirsch, a former member of the League. No attempt had been made to imitiate the handwriting of Liebknecht and Rings, the two supposed minute writers. In fact, Rings was the one member of the group who hardly knew how to write; and Liebknecht's initial was wrong. Marx made two trips to the Police Court in Marlborough Street to authenticate a sample of Liebknecht's actual handwriting and corroborate the testimony of the owner of the public house where they met, who was willing to confirm that no minutes were ever taken and that the dates of the meetings were in any case inaccurate. This and other information had to be sent off to the defence counsel in Cologne in several copies through cover addresses. Jenny Marx described the scene in their household:

My husband had to work the whole day right through into the night. The whole thing is now a battle between the police on one side and my husband on the other. He is credited with everything, the whole revolution, even the conduct of the trial. A whole office has been established in our house. Two or three do the writing, others run errands, others scrape together pennies so that the writers can continue to exist and bring against the old official world proof of the unheard-of scandal. In the middle of it all my three faithful children sing and pipe and often catch it from their dear father. Some business!75

Their efforts succeeded in exposing the forgeries of the prosecution but the jury nevertheless convicted the majority of the accused. 'A degrading and completely unjust sentence',76 wrote the Prussian diplomat Varnhagen von Ense, who had no love for communists.

The episode also had a frustrating sequel: during the trial Marx had begun to write an article putting the main facts of the case before the public. Typical of Marx's drafts, this had grown into a small book to which he gave the title Revelations about the Communist Trial in Cologne.

As well as extensively documenting Prussian police methods, he publicised the split in the Communist League. For Marx felt compelled to dissociate himself from the plots and conspiracies of the Willich-Schapper faction. He explained that his group intended to build 'the opposition party of the future'77 and would thus not have any part in conspiracies to produce immediate revolutionary overthrows. Two thousand copies, printed in Switzerland, were smuggled across the border into Prussia and stocked in a small village; but they were soon discovered and all confiscated by the police. The book was also published in America in a smaller edition but very few copies found their way back into Germany.

With the arrest of the Cologne Committee the League ceased to exist in Germany in an organised form. The fifteento twenty-strong London group had met regularly during 1851 - first in Soho on Tuesday evenings, then in Farringdon Street in the City on Thursdays and finally (during 1852) in the Rose and Crown Tavern, Crown Street, Soho, on Wednesdays.78 Marx presided and the group was referred to by its members as 'the Synagogue' or 'The Marx Society'.79 Soon after the end of the Cologne trial, the League dissolved itself on Marx's suggestion with the declaration that its continued existence, both in London and on the Continent, was 'no longer opportune'.80 Willich's branch of the League ceased to function shortly afterwards. For the next ten years Marx was a member of no political party.

II. R E F U G E E P O L I T I C S

Although the dissolution of the Communist League completed Marx's withdrawal from active politics, he continued throughout the 1850s to be an assiduous and often sarcastic observer of the various intrigues of the London refugees. Deprived of the possibility of engaging in national politics on their home ground, these refugees indulged in feverish political infighting in London, though the doctrinal differences between bourgeois republicans and socialists were real enough. The result was a constantly changing kaleidoscope of plans, committees and alliances, not least among the largest group of refugees - the Germans - whose sects a bewildered I lerzen compared in number to the forty times forty churches traditionally supposed to be found in Moscow. The feud in the Communist League only added to an already fragmented picture. Marx's supporters - with the exception of Liebknecht, who braved his anger - had withdrawn from the Association in Great Windmill Street, but it continued to function under Willich's leadership, as did also the Willich-Schapper group of the Communist League. This group, claiming to constitute the true Central Committee, expelled the Marx faction and declared in a circular to its members that 'we thought and still think that, given the right organisation, our party will be able to put through such measures in the next revolution as to lay the foundation for a workers' society'.81 The split - made public by the unsuccessful prosecution of Bauer and Pfander for the embezzlement of the Association's funds - was soon widened on the occasion of the 'Banquet of the Equals' held in the Highbury Barn Tavern, Islington, on 24 February 1851, to celebrate the anniversary of the 1848 February revolution.

This banquet was organised by the Socialist Louis Blanc in opposition to the 'radical' banquet of Ledru-Rollin. Blanc relied for support on the London communists, and Willich presided at the banquet. Marx sent two spies - Pieper and Schramm - but they were detected and thrown out with considerable violence, even losing in the process (according to Marx) several tufts of hair. This incident meant that, apart from the meetings of his group, Marx was isolated from the other refugees. 'Marx lives a very retired life,' wrote Pieper to Engels, 'his only friends are John Stuart Mill and Lloyd and when you visit him you are received with economic categories instead of with compliments.'82 Marx, however, professed to be quite pleased with this situation and wrote to Engels the same month:

principles. We have now finished with the system of mutual concessions, with half-truths admitted for reasons of propriety and with our duty of sharing in the public ridicule in the party with all these asses.85

Nevertheless, Marx became withdrawn and somewhat embittered, pouring a scorn on his fellow refugees that knew no bounds. Willich in particular became the object of his biting irony and descriptions like 'cowardly, slandering, infamous, foul assassin'84 were typical. At the same time Marx could not help seizing on every scrap of information concerning the refugees' activities and even occasionally personally indulging in the intrigues he so much despised. Late in 1850, for example, Schramm had written Willich a letter containing fantastic plans for revolution in Germany and inviting Willich to take charge. He signed it with the name of Hermann Becker of the Cologne group. Willich fell into the trap and replied with bold plans for immediate revolution. Marx foresaw an excellent opportunity to ridicule Willich and attempted to get the letters from Willich, but without success. Marx's bitterness was increased by Willich's alliance with 'Jesus-Christ' Kinkel (as Marx liked to call him) who had arrived in London at the end of 1850, his prestige as a young revolutionary writer even further enhanced by a remarkable escape from his Prussian gaol. Kinkel frequented the smart colony of German refugees in St John's Wood, gave public lectures at a guinea a head, and soon earned enough money to present his wife with an Evrard grand piano. More grandiose plans followed: in late 1851 Willich and Kinkel produced a scheme (inspired by Mazzini's highly successful 'shilling fund' for European democracy) for a German Revolutionary Loan to 'further the coming republican revolution', and Kinkel departed for America to publicise it. The target was two million dollars, but only a few thousands were actually lent which, after causing yet more dissension among the refugees, found their way into the vaults of the Westminster Bank in London - to be used (years later) to help found the German Social Democrat Party. A brief attempt made in August 1851 to unite the refugees was unsuccessful, and the split remained between the two main factions: the radical republicans led by Marx's old enemy Ruge, and the socialists led by Kinkel and Willich.

At the end of 1851 the arrival of more refugees from Germany coincided with a growing dissatisfaction within the Association over Willich's policies. The arrest of his Paris supporters and Napoleon's coup d'etat made his revolutionary plans less and less plausible. Dissatisfaction was increased by Marx who, through Liebknecht, spread the rumour that Willich was concealing money destined for the refugees. In December some workers who, with Marx's approval, had formed an opposition group